


cinders

by Stairre



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, Depression, Don't copy to another site, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other, POV Second Person, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24614776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stairre/pseuds/Stairre
Summary: Rodimus always was a falling star; burning too brightly for his own good, here and gone in a trailing flash.It slowly dawns on you, one day, that the world has left you behind.---A second-person character study of IDW Rodimus Prime, because that ending wasoofand I needed to work some of that out of me. Ambiguous finish to the fic, but please heed the tags. I mean it.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	cinders

**cinders  
  
  
**

–  
  
  


You dream and wake, and dream and wake, and dream and wake.  
  


The waking world is sharp and kind and soft and cruel in turns, constantly spinning spinning spinning. You wonder if everyone finds living to be like this, a whirling maelstrom of _lifelifelife_ pulsing hard and bright and fast. Everyone around has something to say, a story to tell, a vivid glowing spark that animates them, that lets all these myriad pieces of the universe look at each other and talk to each other, reach out to each other and love and hate and laugh and cry –   
  


You love it. The world is – the world just _is._ Things happen; good things, bad things, with no rhyme or reason. Luck and fate and the laws of probability that sometimes twist themselves up and spit in their own faces. In all its mismatched order and chaos, it is glorious and you love it, you love living.   
  


Some people talk of gods, of divinity and _things happen for a reason_ and holy laws created by simple people. You don’t believe – can’t they see their own miracle? If gods exist, then everyone around is one, the creator and curator of their own world. You’re open to being proven wrong, of course, but in your head, if there _is_ a Primus, a Great Creator, then he’s walking around just like the rest of you, _with_ the rest of you, not up in some holy temple on another plane of existence somewhere.  
  


You like dreaming as well, of course. Sometimes the waking world makes you angry and sad and hurt, your tanks empty and your frame damaged and your mind swirling with the harsh words of others. Then it is to dreams you go, picturing the way things _could_ be, if everyone just _cared_ a little more. Lent themselves to kindness instead of cruelty. You dream of better things, then wake to try and see them through.  
  


You cling to dreams, eventually, when life gets hard. When war and death and pain slowly envelope the entire planet and then beyond. You wanted so _badly_ to fix things, to make things right, to make your softer brighter dreams realised, to extend your hands in aid and lift your people up high. In the end – one of many ends, you soon discover – all you bring them is death.  
  


You burn, are reborn, and bring nothing but suffering to those you try to love. Flames lick the sky in your wake. You love and love and love, clinging as hard as you can, and it’s never enough to keep them. Love hurts.  
  


You still have hope, though. _Without hope, there is nothing,_ you once heard, and the universe still spins on in wondrous desolation, so there must be hope. You find it in small spaces, in hidden places, in whispered words, and hold it tight in your chest. The fires of revolution have always kindled themselves within you, and hope and determination is their fuel.  
  


You are loud and brave and you _feel._ You think that sometimes others are afraid of just how _deeply_ you feel. You try your best, you really do, but sometimes your bravery is more reckless and brash than brave, and sometimes your confidence and hope for things to turn out well is more arrogance than either of those. You have your flaws and you’re trying your best, and it’s not like anyone else can do better than that. Your spark is in the right place, though, and every decision you take is aimed to decrease the waking world’s sufferings, to bring those ragged old dreams of light and peace and justice into fruition.   
  


Your grip on your hope slips, slightly, when you drift alone in space, cold and helpless, the scorching light of something supposedly divine held against your chest. It burns, and you burn, you burn just like they burnt, and that’s _justice,_ isn’t it? The light blinds you, and even as you feel yourself _c h a n g i n g –  
  
_

After, they don’t even care how much you’ve been changed. You get a slap on the back and long overdue verbal recognition of a name you’ve already chosen, and then it’s off to the next crisis. Life goes on, as it must.  
  


Your captaincy reignites some of that hope within you – a ship and crew of your very own! A mission that’s more of a _quest_ , like you’re an adventurer of old. It’s like the kinds of whimsical dreams you once had, before you traded them for ones that had more to do with the world you lived in and how _that_ could be better, than a world that you never lived in at all.   
  


Those scant few years in the breadth of your lifetime were some of the brightest, you swear, even with all the mistakes you made. There were dark times and sad times and times when everything seemed to be lost – but you _won,_ you made it through, against all the odds. Luck and fate and probability and spitting in all the faces of each to triumph.   
  


And then it’s over, just like that. The flame snuffed out, the light switched off. Everyone, a weird crew that came together so tightly you thought that you would be tangled up in each other’s lives forever from then on just – drifts apart. You’ve hardly ever been so gutted to be _wrong.  
  
_

You try, you do. You try to nurture your embers back into flames, rescue them from the slow dousing they underwent, the creeping smothering of their heat and light as the years slipped by, the shadows deepening. The waking world is better now, but it’s still nothing like those battered old dreams.   
  


You try to make new dreams, instead, but none of them sweep you up in a whirlwind, buffeting your limp sails. You float along, impotent, trying to grasp the smoke of a life, of a dream, that’s fading away. No one returns your calls, these days, too sick of your living in the past, and finally you stop trying.  
  


It slowly dawns on you, one day, that the world has left you behind.  
  


That revelation sends you further adrift, spinning lost in space. You grab for your love, but you can’t find it in yourself anymore; your reserves are empty, the lids frozen over, the locks rusted shut.  
  


Engex makes you forget, for a time. That’s good. You want to forget. Soon you’re spending more shanix on the stuff than common sense tells you you should, but everyone has always said that you never had any sense – too brash, too stupid, too boastful, just _too **much** , can’t you reel yourself in even a **little?**_ – so whatever. Once you cared about proving them wrong, but you can no longer summon up that kind of energy.  
  


You’re not living anymore. Life is just kind of a thing that happens to you, continuously, like a loose gear that twinges and clinks every time you move. You learn to ignore its pain.  
  


You tire of waking, eventually. The hope you once held inside of you is long gone, the dreams all burnt out. You bob along, listless, carried through the universe by the currents of everyone else’s lives swirling around you. Look at you. Some old war hero you are – as if any war could produce _heroes_ – walking around like a derelict monument to a history no one really wants to talk about, faded graffiti smeared up your sides and rust crawling on your plinth. You’re an unfunny punchline these days. What a _joke.  
  
_

Sometimes, you pull out your old guns, look at them, sit with them in your hands, and put them back away. Every time you do, it feels like a loss to let them go.  
  


You sign up to the _Exitus,_ because why not? There’s nothing here that you can’t do there, after all, and you felt god-awful with your own nostalgia when you first saw the call put out on the holo-net for crew members.  
  


You think you worry Thunderclash. Hah. Isn’t that weird? Someone _worried_ about you. You debate on just telling him that it’s a bit _too little, too late,_ but to do that, you’d first have to convince yourself that his so-called ‘worry’ is real, and not a figment of your own desperation for any scrap of validation. You can’t even make yourself believe _that._ Always been _good,_ old Thunderclash. Someone everyone said you should be but weren’t.  
  


Oh, well. He wins. You hear that, Thunderclash? You win.   
  


You go back for the funeral, of course. See all those people you once loved and thought you’d be forever after tangled up in the lives in. That all unravelled millennia ago, and they all look so happy, it makes you sick. No, worse. It makes you realise, again, the sharp impact like you felt the first time you had this revelation, that you don’t belong. An outsider, scratching at the door where you weren’t aware you were unwanted, until suddenly, horribly, you were.  
  


You say your bit, of course. Going through the motions of life is how you’ve lived it for a long time now. You place that old star down on the memorial stone, the last withered remnant of someone who was some terrible amalgamation of enemy and friend, by the end. He was cruel to you, and then kind, and it fragging _sucks_ that someone who caused you so much pain respected you more, by the end, than many of your _friends._   
  


You try to leave, and Drift catches up to you, and – it’s _Drift._ Once, you thought – _really_ thought, not just dreamt – that you’d make the _Amica Endura_ vows with him. Now, that dream feels like a distant, laughable fantasy. It’s pathetic. You’re pathetic.  
  


You say you’ll call, when you know you won’t. You talk a bit about the potential you who left all this behind, who still has a ship, a crew, a _life._ Wherever he is, you hope he’s well.  


You clap hands to Drift’s shoulders, the first touch you’ve had with another in – too long – and blather sorrow and comfort and hope you don’t feel at him, because damn it, he’s just lost his Conjunx, and you’re not that much of a jerk. It really _isn’t_ all about you.  
  


You leave as soon as you can without seeming rude.  


You sit back in your quarters on the _Exitus,_ and pull out the guns again. Ship’s empty or near it, everyone away enjoying their short shore-leave. You wish them their happiness.   
  


You take a swallow from the engex bottle you couldn’t stop yourself buying on the way back from the funeral. Fiddle with the guns. Sit there, in the dark, because who cares if this is a cliché, there’s no one here to see anyway, and just – think about it.   
  


Just think. That’s all you’re going to do, you swear. Really, you do. Promise.  
  


~~You’ve broken a lot of promises before.~~   
  


**Author's Note:**

> I understand that JRO only had limited space for the epilogue, but _still._ So many characters deserved better. I will die on this hill.
> 
> I can also be found on [ tumblr! ](https://stairre.tumblr.com/) Come and say hello!


End file.
